NEW DELHI: The Hungarian Grand Prix was a historic weekend for McLaren as Lando Norris notched the second oldest team’s 200th victory in Formula 1, just about managing to beat teammate Oscar Piastri in a tight finish at the Hungaroring.
While the British outfit celebrated their 11th win of the season, Ferrari — the oldest team in F1 — endured one of their worst races.
Pole-setter Charles Leclerc led for 40 out of the 70 laps and looked good for the Italian marque’s first win of the season on a circuit notorious for not being friendly for overtaking. But strategic and mechanical issues have gone hand-in-hand for the Scuderia of late.
This time a chassis problem saw a dramatic loss in performance with Leclerc eventually giving up podium spots to end up fourth. The Monegasque was understandably frustrated, shouting expletives over the radio as he was overtaken by Norris, Piastri and George Russell of Mercedes.
His teammate Lewis Hamilton, statistically the greatest driver in history, fared worse as he started 12th, not even making Q3 in Saturday’s qualifying. He ended without points in the same position. And not to forget the 4.3km circuit is one of his favourite with the 40-year-old having won a record eight races and nine poles.
Hailed as one of the biggest moves in F1 history when the Briton left Mercedes for Ferrari, the move hasn’t really delivered with Hamilton not even able to reach the podium in any race this year.
The seven-time world champion labelled himself “completely useless” after qualifying when he couldn’t make Q3, especially when his teammate took pole ahead of the fast-paced McLarens.
“Ferrari is a very chaotic place. There doesn’t seem to be leadership and that’s very costly because it’s a team that has a huge budget, a lot of fans, even the mechanics, the people inside the team, they’re really fans and they give all their heart,” former world champion Jacques Villeneuve told HT.
“But you need proper leadership. There needs to be a direction. And it seems to be very fiery. It bounces from one side to the other and you have a weekend where it’s fantastic and another where it’s not and nobody seems to understand why. And then it keeps redoing, reshuffles. It’s really difficult to understand how they can get the ball rolling in the right direction.”
Ferrari — just like any other team — is betting on 2026 to be the gamechanger when the new engine regulations come into effect. It is normal for the order to be upended when new rules are introduced with some teams able to understand and use the regulations better than others. One saw that with Brawn in 2009, Mercedes in 2014 and Red Bull in 2022.
“They got very close to winning the championships with (Fernando) Alonso and (Sebastian) Vettel and the team at that time seemed a little bit more controlled. But now it seems that it’s completely out of control,” added Villeneuve.
“You can hear it when there’s a communication between drivers and engineers in the race. They’re not on the same page. They don’t talk the same language; they don’t actually understand each other. There’s no communication. The info is not given to the driver and you can feel the driver’s frustration. It’s a very strange situation there because there’s no reason for them to not be fighting for the championship.”
